So you’re a senior member of a growing business that is looking to recruit a new member for their HR team. But you’re struggling to decide between conducting your recruitment in-house and looking at HR specialist recruitment agencies or a HR staffing agency.
Does this sound familiar to you? This situation isn’t at all rare. It’s completely understandable to struggle making this decision. Unfortunately, recruitment firms have somewhat of a bad name for many people, which can put certain businesses off using them.
It’s important to remember that this stigma stems from poor or low-level recruiters who promise more than they deliver. Quality, specialist recruitment firms can be a huge help for you and your business. But are they a better choice than your own recruitment team?
To find out, let’s take a look at a few factors you’ll want to consider when starting the recruitment process.
Consider Your HR Team’s Capabilities
First of all, before considering a recruitment agency, take a look at your own HR team. You need to have a good understanding of your own recruitment department’s capabilities before you can draw comparisons with specialist recruiters. Consider your team’s abilities. Take into account number of employees, resources, and recruitment experience. Ask yourself if you have the time and resources to be able to commit to a thorough search.
Ask yourself the following questions. How much recruiting experience does your team have? How have previous recruitment processes gone? What results did you achieve?
What if your team hasn’t carried out the recruitment process before? Or if previous hires didn’t work out as you wanted? Perhaps you should consider using a specialist recruitment firm. This is especially important when recruiting for HR. The person you take on may well end up conducting your future recruitment.
It’s important that you're honest about your own team’s abilities. Overestimating your capabilities will only hinder you in the long run.
There’s no shame in outsourcing an agency to help you out if need be. You never know what you might learn about successful recruitment in the process.
Specialist vs Generalist Recruiters
If you’ve made the decision to go to a recruitment firm, you’ve now got to consider whether you want to utilise HR specialist recruitment agencies or generalist agencies. The differences, by and large, are fairly obvious. Specialist agencies generally have a huge amount of knowledge and experience hiring within a specific sector. However they usually have little knowledge and networks in other industries. This means they are ideal if you’re looking for candidates only within your sector. Generalist agencies take a much broader approach to recruitment, and tend to have extensive experience recruiting across multiple sectors and industries.
This is advantageous if you're open to candidates from multiple industries. For example, if you want to hire a HR worker but aren’t necessarily restricted to a certain industry. Certain generalist recruiters also have sectors in which they specialise. Executive Headhunters are a whole of market headhunting firm who operate in any sector, but have particular expertise hiring in industries such as engineering.
Recruiting Experience
Having considered your team’s individual and overall recruiting experience, consider the experience of specialist recruitment agencies. Such agencies, amongst their staff, have extensive combined experience in recruiting. They have experience working as a recruiting team to produce results. You should consider how much experience your HR team has working together, as well as individually. Some of the most important aspects of successful recruitment are the abilities to share your individual skills, communicate, and work together as a coherent unit. These are skills which recruitment agencies specialise in. Remember that simply having a couple of experienced recruiters on your team doesn’t necessarily mean that your team is automatically capable of producing the right results. Teamwork is key.
Of course, each recruitment agency’s experience will differ from each other. If you’re deciding to make use of one, it’s important to find out how much experience they have in each industry and sector. Many specialist recruiters will have this information available on their website. If not, it’s always worth inquiring into the specifics of the agencies experience. You should also gather examples of the results they produce, and if possible, the experience of the specific team members you'll be working with. Credible specialist recruiters often have case studies available to view which provide evidence of their past achievements.
The Number of Recruitment Staff to Devote to the Task
Think about the size of your team as well as their experience. Conducting a detailed, thorough recruitment process can be incredibly time consuming, especially if your position is particularly hard to fill. Often it involves searching through thousands of CVs and profiles online, as well as shortlisting and interviewing potentially hundreds in order the find the right person.
No matter how skilled your team members are, not having enough manpower to devote to the task can add months onto the time frame of your recruitment process.
Your HR team have responsibilities other than recruitment. Sometimes you might even be recruiting for two different positions at the same time. Even if it’s possible to successfully conduct the recruitment process with a small team, you’ve got to consider whether this is fair on your worker. Will it hinder their work in other areas by taking up most of their time?
When considering hiring a specialist recruiter, do some research into the size of their team. Find out how many members of their team will be responsible for recruiting for your role, and in what capacity. What is each team member responsible for? Will they be working on other roles at the same time? Will they be devoting all their time to yours? These are the type of questions you should be asking.
Usually, specialist recruiters will be open about which members of their team will be working on hiring for your role. Some will give you the opportunity to meet these team members and stay in contact with them. This ensures that you know that the right amount of time and effort is going into hiring for your position.
The Overall Cost of Recruitment
Money is a large issue when it comes to recruitment. Everyone wants to save money wherever possible. So you’ll probably be wondering what the most cost effective option is? Well, the answer varies depending on your specific circumstances and resources, as well as which recruitment agency you choose. It’s easiest to break down the cost factors of both options.
When conducting recruitment in-house, there are several cost factors you must consider. First and foremost is the wages of the employees involved in the recruitment process.
There's also the cost of any software or resources that you need, particularly if your team hasn’t conducted in-house recruitment before. In addition, the cost of arranging and travelling to and from interviews and meetings can add up. This is especially true if you’re conducting multi-stage interviews with a lot of candidates.
This can mean several interviews per person, which can add up without you noticing.
The biggest factor, however, is the potential cost of rehiring. If you conduct recruitment in-house, you want to be thorough enough to ensure the candidate you hire is perfect for your role. If not, you risk subjecting you and your business to excessive cost when rehiring, should the new hire leave soon after starting. This is one of the biggest costs that many businesses don’t consider when trying to save money by recruiting in-house. The cost of inducting and training a new hire can be surprisingly large. You want to avoid having to rehire, as that would also mean incurring the cost of the whole recruitment process again!
In comparison, specialist recruitment agencies often have clear bulk fees. These can sometimes appear to be quite costly depending on the agency you go to. However, in return you generally get your money’s worth in quality of hire and efficiency. Some people are deterred by the initial cost of hiring a specialist agency. However you’ll often find that if you go through a quality agency, this can actually save you money in the long run. This is because it reduces the likelihood that you'll need to rehire. The key factor here is finding an agency that is the right quality.
Time-Frame
Time frame of your recruitment process can vary greatly depending on how difficult your role is to fill, and how broad or narrow you want to be in your search.
It’s useful to take into account any previous in-house recruitment you’ve conducted. How long did these processes take to complete at each stage? Think about your desired time scale, for example if you need to hire someone by a certain date or if it’s more general. Once you know this, you’ll want to research recruitment agencies and identify how long they generally take to complete a talent search.
Some agencies will advertise themselves as working within a set amount of time (for example, collecting a shortlist within 4-6 weeks), whilst others may be more flexible to your needs (e.g., you could negotiate a time frame).
Ability to Attract High-Level Talent
This is the main appeal of a specialist recruitment agency. These agencies specialise in finding and attracting the best talent in your industry This is something that can be quite difficult for in-house recruiters.
Respected specialist agencies have the experience, resources, and reputation to attract high-calibre candidates, often when they aren’t even looking for a new role. They achieve this through their expertise and connections. Well-known quality specialist recruitment agencies are also able to draw out candidates who are usually hard to attract through their well-respected identity.
High-level talent are more likely to be attracted to opportunities presented by an agency that has earned a good name for itself amongst industry professionals. This doesn't mean that in-house recruitment can’t also attract the same high-level talent. Rather, it will be more difficult if your team doesn’t have previous experience of doing so, or a good company reputation.
It can be especially challenging attracting high-level talent if your business is small.
Knowledge of the Sector & Your Business
Put simply, specialist recruitment agencies generally have a higher level of industry knowledge than a standard in-house recruitment team. This means that they understand industry recruitment trends, as well as how to identify the industry’s best talent and where it can be found. They often have knowledge of what companies the best talent work for, and what skillsets can be found in each position within the industry. Any good specialist HR agency knows where the best HR professionals work, and where they look online. Recruiters can utilise this to get their attention.
This is why it can be an obvious choice to use a specialist recruitment agency should you feel that your in-house team isn’t entirely knowledgeable or experienced in the details of your sector.
Ultimately, your choice should be dependant on the capabilities and experience of your in-house recruitment team, and how much you're willing to spend on a specialist recruitment agency. If you're looking to fill a high-level HR role, and don’t have a very experienced recruitment team at your disposal, you should consider using HR specialist recruitment agencies. These agencies can save you time and money, as well as find the right person for the job.
